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The HEAD @GIBS : 25 AUGUST – 1 SEPTEMBER 2011

Book Review: What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential / Robert Steven Kaplan

Excerpt . . .

In What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, HBS professor and business leader Robert Kaplan presents a process for asking the big questions that will enable you to diagnose problems, change course if necessary, and advance your career. He lays out areas of inquiry, including questions such as:

? Do I clearly articulate my vision and top priorities? ? Does the way I spend my time enable me to achieve my top priorities? ? Do I give subordinates timely and direct feedback they can act on? Have I developed a succession roadmap? ? Is my leadership style still effective, and does it reflect who I truly am? READ MORE . . .

Building an Impact Economy / by Cathy Clark

This post originally appeared (Aug 2) on the Social Edge and builds on an earlier CASE blog post, “Cathy Clark Heads to the White House“. We’ve all heard the impressive numbers – JP Morgan reports a potential market for impact investing of up to $1 trillion, the Monitor Institute predicts $500 billion. It’s exciting to consider the potential of impact investing and witness the momentum that has been building around this field. Recently the White House signaled that they also see impact investing as a powerful force and a critical part of the domestic policy agenda. I was lucky enough to be invited, along with about 150 investors, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, executives and policymakers on June 22, 2011 to the White House’s first convening, in collaboration with the Aspen Institute, on “Building an Impact Economy in America.” The “impact economy” has been defined by the Aspen Institute as the “twin forces of supply and demand, impact investing and social entrepreneurship, that are driving systemic change in the US and around the world.” The goal of the meeting was to start to work with Administration officials to understand how to remove barriers, streamline regulations and target existing government resources to support the building of the impact economy. READ MORE . . .

Meeting Bowls on Times Square

For the rest of this summer, visitors in New York’s Times Square can sit, rest and talk in three oversized structures which resemble salad spinners. Designed by the Spanish design collaborative mmmm…, the Meeting Bowls are meant to offer a small haven in the middle of Times Square’s electric buzz. The designers wanted to provide intimate spaces for friends and strangers to meet, relax, and if they wish, rock. Each Meeting Bowl sits on a base that rocks–gently–and fits up to eight people. The mmmm … collaborators, based in Madrid, designed the five foot tall structures and sent digital drawings to a fabricator in New Jersey. The fiber board pieces were CNC cut and shipped to New York where they were constructed on site in two days. READ MORE . . .

Throw your dream into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, or a new country.

– Anais Nin –

Blogging, social media use skyrocketing at universities

Excerpt . . .

Social media usage soars – 100 percent of colleges and universities studied are using some form of social media, up from 95 % last year, 85% in 2009 and 61% in 2008. Facebook is the most common form of social networking being used with 98% of colleges and universities reporting having a Facebook page (up from 87% last year). Eighty-four percent have a school Twitter account (up from 59%) and 66% have a blog (up from 51%). Podcasting has risen from 22% to 41% in just one year. College admissions professionals are flocking to LinkedIn with 47% on the professional networking site, up from 16% last year. The number of schools using MySpace has declined from 16% last year to 8% this year. Foursquare and You Tube were included in the study for the first time and are being used by 20% and 86% respectively. The use of message boards and video blogging have remained at approximately the same level as last year (37% and 47% respectively).

The rise of the blog – Blogging continues to be embraced by colleges and universities. While other sectors are reporting a leveling off of blogging (i.e., Fortune 500, Forbes Top Charities) higher ed adoption has grown significantly in the past year. Eight percent of schools with blogs are using some internally developed applications (down from 14% in 2009-2010). Others cite WordPress (38%) and Blogger (10%) as platforms.. .

And it seems to be working … When asked how successful social media tools have been for their schools, respondents have “consistently raved about their experience,” especially Facebook (95% success) and YouTube (92%). For every tool studied, a high degree of success is reported. The relatively new Foursquare is being used by 20 percent of those interviewed while 61% of them report success with it. The exception is MySpace which shows a decrease in perceived success from 42% to 34%. READ MORE . . .

The man who holds in his hands the fate of U.S. credit, and with it potentially the global economy, favors small tie knots, sports a bushy mustache and smokes his fair share of cigarettes. Beyond that, he is a mystery, like the work he does. You may have never heard of David Beers but every finance minister in the world knows of him. A Wall Street veteran, a graduate of London School of Economics where he has endowed a scholarship in his name, he is the global head of sovereign credit ratings for Standard & Poor’s. It is on his say-so and the committee he oversees that financial markets have been rocked over the last 18 months. They now await his judgment upon the U.S. debt deal on which will turn borrowing costs all around the world. READ MORE . . .